Witness to drug dealer's fatal shooting testifies

WEST CHESTER — A prosecution witness told the Common Pleas Court jury hearing the case against a West Chester man accused of killing a drug dealer in a hail of gunfire that he watched as the defendant shot the man pointblank.

“I heard someone like screaming in pain,” Kevin Morgan told the jury of seven men and four women in the case of James Potts, one of two men who are accused of shooting 23-year-old Towayne Uqdah in January 2012. “At first I didn’t know who it was, and then I saw (Potts) standing over my friend. With a gun.”

What did he do with the gun, First Assistant District Attorney Michael Noone, who is leading the prosecution in Judge Jacqueline Cody’s courtroom, asked Morgan, who said he had been at an East Gay Street bar a few moments before with Uqdah and another man.

“I saw him take the first shot,” Morgan said, referring to Potts. “I saw a flash around the gun, and I took off running down the street.” He said he then called a friend and told him what had happened.

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But Morgan acknowledged both to Noone and on cross-examination that when police approached him about the shooting shortly afterwards, he lied about what he had seen. He said only that he knew that a friend had been shot, but not who had done it.

“That would be like snitching,” Morgan told the jury. “I didn’t want to be involved in the situation. I wanted to take the street route.” He later reversed course and told police what he had seen, he said. “I realized that it was the right thing to do.”

Potts, 30, is on trial on charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and related firearms charges. If convicted of the murder charge, he faces a mandatory life sentence in state prison.

His co-defendant, Greg Arrington, also of West Chester, will be tried at a later date, Cody having ordered them to be tried separately.

Also, authorities said Arrington has been charged in Philadelphia with witness intimidation and related offenses for allegedly shooting a witness in the case, Uqdah’s cousin Andre Tutts, in the lower leg to keep him from going to authorities about the shooting.

Uqdah, who had a record of drug arrests and who had only a month before his death been released from state prison for drug trafficking, died of gunshot wounds about 2 a.m. Jan. 27, 2012. He was shot, according to authorities, as he, Morgan and Tutts, walked from the Spare Rib bar on East Gay Street up the 100 block of North Matlack Street, where Tutts had parked his car.The car had been towed.

As the men began to walk to Morgan’s car, he told the jury, he heard footsteps behind them. He turned and saw Potts pointing a gun at him. “He said don’t move,” Morgan said of Potts.

On cross-examination by Assistant Public Defender Susanna DeWese, who is representing Potts, Morgan said that he had never seen Pots before that night, and that he only started focusing on him while at the bar inside the Spare Rib because Uqdah pointed him out.

Dewese, in her questioning, attempted to damage Morgan’s credibility by getting him to acknowledge that he had lied to police initially about what he said transpired that night. She also challenged testimony that he had given at a preliminary hearing about when he learned Potts identity, and about confrontations that Arrington and Uqdah had had in the past.

The trial, which began with jury selection Monday, is expected to last through the week.